Rocketdyne's XRS-2200 linear aerospike rocket engine completed a 250-second hot fire test at Stennis Space Center late Thursday, extending its run time beyond what it would face in flight on the NASA/Lockheed Martin X-33 reusable launch vehicle testbed. Stennis reported no anomalies or engine issues after the test, which was the 12th of 14 planned hot-fire tests of the inside-out engine. Pending the outcome of post-test inspections, the next test of the aerospike is set for the week of April 17-21.
Honeywell, Inc., Clearwater, Fla., is being awarded a $7,086,170 option to a firm-fixed-price contract to provide for 91 Embedded Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System (EGI) units applicable to the F-16 aircraft, and 91 lots of Recurring Delta Hardware. Expected contract completion date is March 29, 2002. Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, is the contracting activity (F33657-99-C-2040-P00020).
Textron Systems Corp., Wilmington, Mass., is being awarded a $74,177,639 fixed-price-incentive contract to provide for 300 CBU-105C/B sensor fused weapons and associated warranty and sustaining support for the BLU-108B Joint Standoff Weapon. Expected contract completion date is May 31, 2002. Negotiation completion date was March 31, 2000. Air Armament Center, Eglin AFB, Fla., is the contracting activity (F08635-00-C-0009-P00001).
ENERGIA ACCOUNT: Conflict is brewing in Moscow over the venerable Mir orbital station. Russian Aerospace Agency officials say they will decide Mir's fate this month, based on reports on its condition from the two-man crew that reached the abandoned spacecraft last week. Meanwhile MirCorp, the private venture of Western investors and Russian aerospace giant RSC Energia, declares Mir in good shape and says it will send another crew there in September. If the aerospace agency disagrees, it remains an open question who will have the final word.
EARLY WARNING SYSTEM FOR GULF: U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen briefs Gulf Cooperation Council leaders on a system to warn of "any threat in the region from a potential missile attack...so that preventive measures could be taken." It could apply to Iraq, "should it reconstitute its missile capability, which we hope [it] will not be able to do," or Iran in answer to concern over its development of long-range missiles. "It could apply to any number of countries," according to Cohen.
LOCKHEED MARTIN CORP. has entered an agreement with Space Operations International LLC to provide "affordable" secondary-payload launches for small satellites, working with the small-satellite market to develop standard accommodations for piggyback payloads weighing 500 kilograms or less. Space Operations International, a new company formed by Ball Aerospace and Universities Space Research Association, will gain access to excess launch capacity on Lockheed Martin's family of launchers, including the Atlas II, III and V.
DOD INFORMATION TECH BOARD: As one of his final directives before turning over the reins of the No. 2 Pentagon slot to Rudy de Leon, John Hamre established a Defense Dept. chief information officer executive board for the acquisition, management and use of information technology. The unit, whose members are yet to be named, may be a partial answer to Defense Science Board recommendations for Tactical Battlefield Management. The new group, which replaces the DOD CIO council, has duties that include Global Information Grid (GIG) issues.
RECYCLING: NASA's Kennedy Space Center hopes to save about $80,000 a year by capturing highly toxic nitrogen tetroxide that escapes as vapor during Space Shuttle processing and using it to make fertilizer for orange groves on the coastal Florida launch facility. An "Improved Nitrogen Tetroxide Scrubber" developed at KSC and installed last month captures the toxic vapor in water, then adds hydrogen peroxide to produce nitric acid, which is converted to potassium nitrate -- a commercial fertilizer -- with the addition of potassium hydroxide.
The U.S. Air Force has installed an anti-icing system on its Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, and the first baseline system is scheduled for delivery delivered on April 15, an Air Force official told The DAILY. "We are modifying the aircraft with somewhat of an anti-icing capability," said Col. Bruce Kreidler, chief of the UAV division, Aerospace Command and Control, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Center, Langley AFB, Va. But, he explained, the system is not the same as a de-icing capability.
HEALTHY EATING: NASA and the National Cancer Institute are joining forces this week to develop ingestible capsules that can detect, diagnose and treat diseases inside the human body. "You can...integrate nanomaterials with proteins and integrate, literally, biology and the hard physical world," Administrator Daniel S. Goldin tells Congress. The result will be "micromolecular sensors" that combine space-agency work on nanotechnology with NCI's work defining the molecular characteristics of tumors, and can actually probe individual cells. Goldin and Dr.
Israel Aircraft Industries reported a 70.7% boost in net profit for 1999, earning $70 million compared to $41 million in 1998. President and CEO Moshe Keret also said sales for 1999 reached $2 billion, a 7.2% increase over the $1.87 billion reported for 1998. Exports in 1999 reached about $1.5 billion, a 4.7% increase over the $1.44 billion of 1998. IAI said its exports accounted for about 9% of Israel's total industrial exports, excluding diamonds.
FINGER POINTING: There seems to be general agreement that a terrestrial software glitch brought down the third Zenit rocket launched by the Boeing-led Sea Launch venture last month, but who made the mistake is open to debate. A software update prepared by RSC Energia failed to shut a helium valve in the second stage before liftoff, depriving the second-stage engine of the pressure it needed to spin up before igniting, according to an expert from Russia's TsNIIMash space research and development center who took part in the Zenit failure review.
Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics&Surveillance Systems, Akron, has won a $62 million contract from Raytheon Co.'s Missile Systems business unit, Tucson, Ariz., for 644 new and remanufactured Digital Scene Matching Area Correlators and other components for Tomahawk cruise missiles.
NO LOOSE NUKES: There is no evidence of any problem with the security of Russian nuclear weapons, says Stephen R. Sestanovich, ambassador-at-large and special advisor to the Secretary of State on newly independent states. And, he says, maintaining that security remains a high priority for the Russian military. "We don't have any reason to think that control over those weapons by civilian leadership has been in doubt, and we don't have any reason to think that accidental launch is a new or growing danger," he says. The U.S.
Russia is designing a stealth bomber whose size is between that of two stealthy U.S. aircraft, the F-117 light strike plane and the B-2 bomber, according to Aviation Week&Space Technology magazine.
Aeroquip, Cleveland, has purchased a Honeywell International plant in Ocala, Fla. The facility manufactures components for such customers as Aerospatiale, Boeing, Eurocopter, General Electric and major airlines. The dollar value of the deal wasn't disclosed.
THIOKOL PROPULSION'S Science and Engineering Huntsville Operations (SEHO) in Huntsville, Ala., will fabricate complex composite structures for NASA under a three-year, $3 million follow-on technology contract with the Advanced Space Transportation program at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center. Among components to be built under the contract extension will be fiber-placed honeycomb materials, liquid engine combustion chambers, composite elbow ducts and composite insulated tanks.
Sirius Satellite Radio is on target to inaugurate nationwide service in the U.S. by the end of the year, with three satellite launches scheduled beginning in June. The first of the company's three Space Systems/Loral FS-1300 spacecraft is scheduled for a June 28 launch aboard a Russian Proton rocket arranged by International Launch Services, according to a company spokesperson. The second and third satellites are scheduled for flight in September and October, also on Protons.
PANAMSAT'S Galaxy IVR satellite has been shipped to the Guiana Space Center near Kourou for an Ariane launch at mid-month, while Eutelsat plans to launch its Siberia Europe Satellite (SESAT) on a Russian Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on April 17. Galaxy IVR, a Hughes HS 601 HP platform, will serve North America with 24 C-band and 24 Ku-band transponders from 99 degrees West longitude. SESAT was built by Russia's NPO-PM with a payload provided by Alcatel Space.
TRW has delivered the low data rate communications payload for the sixth and final Milstar military communications satellite to Lockheed Martin Space Systems, the Milstar prime contractor. TRW also will provide post-delivery support for satellite testing, launch and on-orbit operations of the high-security digital spacecraft. TRW also supplies digital and antenna subsystems for the medium data rate payloads built for the final four Milstar platforms by Hughes Space&Communications Co.
HUGHES GLOBAL SERVICES has won an open-ended contract to provide satellite telecommunications products and equipment to agencies of the State of California, under the California Multiple Award Schedules (CMAS) procurement scheme. CMAS allows state procurement officers to buy equipment directly from the Hughes unit without going through a competitive bid process. There is no ceiling on the amount of business the state can do with Hughes under the contract, according to the company.
SPACEDEV INC. has won a grant from the California Space and Technology Alliance (CSTA) to test-fire hybrid rocket motors for an Orbital Transfer Vehicle SpaceDev is developing. SpaceDev said it developed its OTV concept with funds from the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, under a contract concluded last month.
The first full-up live fire test of an improved Sensor Fuzed Weapon, on March 10 at Eglin AFB, Fla., demonstrated a significant boost in performance at a minimal cost increase, said Len J. Iannuzzo, the U.S. Air Force's program director.
An agreement worked out in the Senate budget resolution late Thursday would break the deadlock between Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) over the $13.2 billion, House-approved fiscal 2000 supplemental. It would also mean that $4 billion in defense funds in the supplemental would be shifted into fiscal 2001 defense appropriations, virtually assuring that the Pentagon will get the money it wanted, but later than it hoped.
